Living With One Car

[KrozFan]

Saw this article on another financial blog today about living with one car.

http://www.fivecentnickel.com/2009/0...ar-couple-dfa/

Not sure if you ever wrote anything about living with one car Bob, but I was wondering if anyone here has ever done it and how it went.

My wife and I were down to one car for a month or so after I got into an accident earlier this year. Luckily I work fairly close to our apartment so my wife was able to drop me off in the morning without adding too much more time to her commute. Overall I ended up spending about an extra hour at my office, but I brought a book and just read for that time mostly so it actually wasn't too bad. It isn't something I would want to do forever, but in a pinch it really wasn't too bad for us and if we had to do it for a few months some time to save cash for a car we could do it.

[pochax]

it probably depends on each family's circumstances....for example, it would be tough for my family because i work 30 minutes from my home and there is no public transportation to get there. my wife has to go to her part-time job as well as haul to kids to preschool and other activities which are all more-or-less located <10-15 minutes from where we lives so it doesn't make sense for her to drop me off at work and then come back to work (and fight NY area rush-hour traffic to do so). when we do have car problems, i do have a neighbor who works at the same place but we often go at different hours so we can't consistently carpool, but we'll help eachother out during a pinch (i just brought her into work today because her car is in the shop). carpooling would, thus, be the best solution for me in my situation but i prefer the flexibility at this point.

[bob]

Yea, I agree with pochax - a couple of years ago when my wife and I worked about 45 minutes in the opposite direction of each other - I don't think we could have pulled it off. Now we definitely could if we needed to since I work from home. We actually have 3 cars right now - only one has much value - the other are 2 older cars that I am going to drive until they die - Since I am taking the pochax approach to car buying (only with cash) from now on, I figured I would drive these old ones for a while until I have enough cash saved up for something I want...

[cev2000]

We have been living with one car for about a year and a half. My husband works 12 hour shifts so he takes the car. We are lucky to live in an area where if I do need to go anywhere I can walk, take lightrail or ask a neighbor for help. Someday when we can pay cash for another car we might get one until then it really is saving us money because I can't go out shopping during the day.

[pochax]

......until then it really is saving us money because I can't go out shopping during the day.

LOL! i am not sure you meant this to be funny, but i was thinking to myself, "hey, what a great budgeting technique to stop my wife from shopping!"

ps: i admit that wouldn't work because i'm the spender in the family and she's the saver.

[4jacks]

Since I am taking the pochax approach to car buying...

Are you going for the frequent flyer miles too?? j/k

Honestly we could probably pull it off now. We both work about 15 mins away from home in roughly the same direction. But I work M-F 8am-5pm. and she works weird different shifts. mostly going in at 10am and getting off at 6-7pm So I would be stuck at work for a couple hours. There a couple guys who live near me, I could probably bug for a ride home some days.

Naturally we don't do it becuase we it's so much easier to drive seperate, but in a pinch we probably could.

[Steve Orris]

One car does have disadvantages. But we work around it. I work from home now and my wife has not worked outside the home since we had kids. It all depends on a family's situation.

[matt]

Anne and I have been carpooling into work for a number of years since we both work in downtown Milwaukee it's really easy for us. Since my company doesn't cover my parking and her's does we drive in, drop me off and then she goes to work and parks the car in her lot.

We still had two cars until last fall when my car broke something in the wheel well and the mechanic told us it'd cost about $1200 to have to fixed. The car was only worth about that much and since Anne and I already carpooled into work we decided to not have it fixed. After we told the mechanic we were not going to have him fix it and would probably donate it or something, he offered to buy it from us so we sold it to him.

Since then if there's ever a situation where we absolutely need to have two vehicles we can usually solve it with a cab ride, which are fairly inexpensive around here.

One thing to keep in mind if you are going down to one vehicle, don't expect your auto insurance cost to be cut in half. Your insurance company most likely gives you a discount for insuring multiple vehicles with them. So when you go down to one vehicle (from two) your insurance cost may only go down 30% or something. This can be a bit of a shock if you were expecting it to be around 50% like I was. However it's also a good time to go insurance shopping since it's on your mind.

[Daughter of Light]

My husband and I have chosen to live as a one car family for almost 26 years now. I'm a SAHM and we have four children that we're educating at home. We're involved in plenty of activities but we've just learned to schedule things accordingly. Sometimes we have to practice some "give and take" or it's a little inconvenient BUT I don't think we'll ever move to two cars. We have other things we'd rather spend our resources on. We've always chosen to buy a new vehicle and then drive the thing to death too. The last one had 213,000 miles on it. We downsized from a Chrysler minivan to a Mazda 5. We really like the better MPG :)

[parrott84]

My wife and I have always been a two car (and currently 3 as we try to sell our previous car) family. Mostly for convenience. My friend and his wife have been a one car family for a while now, but he works 5 minutes from home and rides his bike sometimes. If we were to move to one car I would probably do the same. For us, one car is the family car (minivan) for my wife and soon to be 4 kids, and the other is a very fuel efficient car for me to drive to and from work everyday. We are also on the pay cash only for your car plan (for our last two vehicles). It has worked very well for us and I plan on that always being the case.